Speechwriting Expert Critiques Commencement Speech, Missing Whole Point

Before my daughter’s commencement weekend, a friend told me, “Don’t drink too much.”

She should have advised, “Don’t think too much.”

But you have a lot of time to think, during a graduation ceremony at a school as big as Ohio University’s was, over the weekend. And what was I thinking during the commencement speech, by a rich OU alum and a 75-year-old “private astronaut” named Larry something?

I was dismissing it as a clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous clichés. Life won’t go exactly according to plan. “But that’s okay.” Everyone here will make mistakes. “But that’s okay.” But, Larry said, “You’re in total control of four things. Your attitude, your effort, your choices and your time and how you spend it. Do not be afraid to fail … because failure is the first step to success.” And so on.

A long time ago, my speechwriter pal Mike Long wrote a hard-bitten send-up of commencement speeches, which he said were almost universally “vapid, molasses-speed addresses.” This Larry guy’s speech contained at least half of Long’s litany:

The Story Without A Point
The Exhortation To Do Something Important That Never Gets Named
Vague Nonsense Lifted from a TED Talk
The Lesson About Hard Work From Someone Who Sits at a Desk
Non-Specific Demands to Change the World (e.g., “Be Mindful” and “Care About Others”)
The Authoritarian Impulse Presented As Caring
The “We Stand On The Shoulders Of Giants” Routine
Stuff I Wrote Down Last Night in the Hotel
The Straight-Faced Delusion That Everyone Here Is Going to Do Great Things
Political Self-Righteousness That Makes Half the Room Uncomfortable on a Day They Deserve to Enjoy
The Optimistic Portrait of the Future Overstated by the Rich Guy Who Will Be Fine Either Way
The Praise of Family Support Delivered Oblivious to the Plurality Who Had Little
Rank Hypocrisy Tolerated Because He’s a Major Donor
Rambling Improv From Famous Guy Who Imagines That’s Enough to Make Him Interesting
Ninety Seconds of Useful Stuff Stretched Out for a Half Hour
Metaphor That Goes Nowhere
Sanctimony
Stuff Mostly Cribbed From One Of Those Essays on a Chipotle Cup
Youthful Tech Start-Up Guy Who Didn’t Need College in the First Place and Wants You to Know It
The Thing That Happened to Me in an Exotic-Sounding Foreign Place Whose Importance to This Occasion I Will Never Make Quite Clear
Something About a Crossroads

Afterward, a few of my daughter’s pals’ parents asked Mr. Speechwriter Expert Guy what grade I would give the speech. “F!” I volunteered, cracking everyone up.

And so kept volunteering it, of course, until I volunteered it to one mom—a smart, wise, warm, loving and pragmatic mom of a daughter I admire very much—who hadn’t asked for my expert analysis. Well, it turned out she loved Larry’s speech.

As soon as I heard that, I re-understood something about these speeches that I’ve always known. At one of the most complicated emotional moments in a parent’s life—each parent in the 13,000-person arena is halfway through a large loaded margarita—

—of pride and hope and anxiety. Such a parent will cling, even to commonplaces and platitudes (and maybe especially to commonplaces and platitudes), like a drunk to a lamppost.

Commencement speeches are not, chiefly, intellectual exercises, any more than commencement ceremonies are college classes.

Dana, I’m sorry I said anything about the speech. You’re right. It was great. The whole weekend was great. Our daughters are great. Their lives won’t go perfectly according to plan … and they will make mistakes. But they’re in total control of four things ….